New Places

Posted on February 21, 2011
"I'm an adaptable nomad. My roots are inside of me."
~ julie delpy

I think everyone, in some capacity, enjoys exploring a new place. For example I've visited France and Japan, and of course loved every minute of it. Even sitting in a hotel room in a new place can make a person bristle with excitement. Not everyone, however, can fully enjoy separating themselves from what is comfortable and familiar while striking out into a new place. Many people, I think, would like to remain somehow tethered to the old places while exploring the new. While I can understand that feeling, it's just not for me.

I can become extremely stagnant and uncomfortable when I have been in one place for too long. When I am in a new place (but know I'm going back to the old place) I feel like I can't completely, 100%, enjoy myself and relax. The idea that "this is going to end soon" is always gnawing around in the back of my mind. Now, moving to a new place, that's different. The mere prospect is like a ball of fire in your chest (warm, stimulating, exciting), and if you stay in one place too long it cools and hardens, and then sits there like a lump weighing you down. I know I'm not alone on this.

I've lived in several places in the United States. In my adult life, the notable places are: Michigan (where I grew up), Tennessee (only for two years), and California. Each of these three places have been wildly different, and sufficiently stroked my predilection for that ball of fire associated with "moving on" and "starting fresh." Along with being satiating and building me up, each place also wore me down in different ways, each with varying degrees of coarseness. In that respect, moving around a lot can "polish" a person.

With that, I have to say, my nomadic urges are spurring me on once again. I'd love to live in a new place. Some way or another, Seattle ended up in my crosshairs. Ever since getting the idea of Seattle in my head, any mention of the name sets my heart aflutter. Any pictures or articles about the place inspire a vague arousal. Hahaha… yea, weird huh? So that's what's in my head, it's kind of like a crush, sort of an… "Ok wow… this is enticing, but geez, I like, barely know anything about this Seattle… what if it doesn't like me?"

Haha… right?

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Obligatory Introductions…

Posted on February 20, 2011
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
~ e. e. cummings

My name is Lynn (also known as natsuki or natsukigirl online, I also sometimes go by the moniker tokirocket or riotalice). As of writing this post I am a 29-year-old web developer girl (oh come on, let me be a girl just for a little while longer, hey?), living near Los Angeles, California with my programmer husband Darrell and two female cats, Lydia (tortie) and Pyper (tabby). My current goal in life is to start my family (see also: produce demon spawn). We've been trying for about a year (we even have our names picked out; Parker for a girl, and Elliot or Benjamin for a boy), but apparently one of the reasons it's taking so long is we haven't been "timing things right"... who knew sex was so hard?

I've been online since the age of 12, and have been a web-designer for almost just as long. When I first discovered fan-made anime websites I immediately wanted to create one of my own, for the series Sailormoon. My father handed me a book about HTML and told me that if I learned to hand-code and planned out my website, that he would get me a domain name. That domain is sweetusagi.com (I haven't updated it in several years, and I'm currently in the process of moving it over to my new server). I do not remember what life was like before computers, manga, and the internet.

I am most well known online for being an extremely avid ( some may say, elitist ^^;; ) Japanese manga (comic books) collector. I heavily promote the idea of collecting and reading manga in it's original language (enjoy them the way the artist originally intended) and thusly I enjoy promoting the learning of the Japanese language whenever possible. I myself have been studying Japanese both casually and formally since the age of 13. Although I can easily enjoy the manga I collect, and find it fairly simple to articulate myself in Japanese online, a recent trip to Japan showed me that I shouldn't be so cocky to claim any real fluency. I hope to remedy this in the coming years as I would like to raise my children with a strong knowledge of Japanese in addition to native English.

I'm also fairly well know in Japanese music circles as the girl who made yuki.girlyrock.com. (The girlyrock site is also temporarily down as I'm moving to a new server)

Besides manga I also collect and photograph Japanese and Korean fashion dolls ( 着せ替え人形 ). Some examples of dolls I collect would be; Takara Neo Blythe dolls (Japanese Blythe doll modeled after the 1972 vintage Blythe doll by Kenner), Takara Licca-chan, Sekiguchi Momoko, and a variety of ball-jointed (articulated resin) dolls from Latidoll, Fairyland, Luts, and Volks... among others.

The goal of this blog is to regain my blogging legs and actually write something useful, about hobbies and life... a far cry from the ten long years of petty personal blogging I did in my youth and young adult years. I hope to be both edifying and entertaining with my writing here. Thank you for visiting. :)

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